A note on the history of the four-colour conjecture

Brendan D. McKay

A note on the history of the four-colour conjecture

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arxiv 1201.2852 v2 pith:FIDY6VD4 submitted 2012-01-13 math.CO math.HO

Brendan D. McKay This is my paper · ORCID

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keywords conjecturefour-colourattentionbackbroughtdateearliestfrancis

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The four-colour conjecture was brought to public attention in 1854, most probably by Francis or Frederick Guthrie. This moves back by six years the date of the earliest known publication.

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Complexity Classification of Colouring Problems with Parity Constraints
cs.DS 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

A nearly complete complexity map of parity-constrained graph colourings: for two, three, and four-plus colours, almost every constraint combination is NP-complete, with ∨⋆ for q≥3 left open.

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